Background
Wang, Hao was born in 1921 in Jinan, Shandgon Province, China.
Wang, Hao was born in 1921 in Jinan, Shandgon Province, China.
Southwest Associated University. Qinghua University; Harvard University. University of Zurich.
Professor, Harvard University. Professor, Rockefeller University. 1955-1956, John Locke Lecturer, University of Oxford.
Visitor, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton.
Main publications:(1962) A Survey of Mathematical Logic.(1974) From Mathematics to Philosophy, London: Routledge.(1986) Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to What We Know. Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press(Bradford Books).(1987) Reflections on Kurt Godel, Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press.Secondary literature:Complete Chinese Encyclopedia (1987), Philosophy Volumes, Beijing: Chinese Encyclopedia Publications.
Wang Hao’s studies in China led to doctoral work at Harvard and a career in mathematics and philosophy in the USA. His main philosophical writings have drawn on deep mathematical and logical understanding, but also show distinctively philosophical interests and abilities. In his philosophy of mathematics Wang sought to anchor mathematical knowledge in intuitive truths, known to us through reflective thinking going beyond the immediately obvious. Our intuitive knowledge is prior to any particular theory and is the ground for checking our philosophical claims. He invented the terms ‘substantial factualism and ‘phenomenography’ to name different versions of his view. Because positivism ignored our intuitive knowledge it was empty and artificial. Linguistic philosophy was unsystematic and too concerned with arbitrary demands for clarity and the facts of language instead of the rich resources of our intuitive knowledge.
In From Mathematics to Philosophy (1974).
Wang used the notion of substantial factualism to hold together comments on a wide variety of mathematical concepts and their implications for philosophy. His main discussions consider the relationship between mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics, Russellian logic, logical truth, the concept of set, logicism and the nature of mathematics, necessity, analyticity and apriority, mathematics and computers, minds and machines, and the relation of the pursuit of knowledge to human life.
In Beyond Analytic Philosophy (1986), Wang contributed to the current self-examination of the analytic tradition in philosophy. He argued that the central viewpoints of Carnap and Quine were deficient because they abjured direct intuition of abstract objects, thus impoverishing mathematical understanding. Allowing such Gôdelian intuition would do justice to what we know and provide a radical reorientation for philosophy. Because mathematical knowledge is there intuitively, philosophy would become a matter of perspicuous ordering rather than of creativity or discovery. It would provide a worldview rather than specialist knowledge. Wang ambitiously proposed a philosophy drawing on many Eastern and Western influences. His friendship with Kurt Gödel led to the Reflections (1987) publicizing and exploring Gôdel’s philosophical views, many of which profoundly influenced his own central philosophical programme.
Philosophy of mathematics. Logic; metaphysics and epistemology.
His teachers Jin Yuelin and Wang Dianji, as well as Kurt Godel, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and W. V. O. Quine.